Health Reform

A Healthy System for the 21st Century

For more information on the National Health and Hospitals Network click here.

The Gilllard Labor Government is delivering a National Health and Hospitals Network, to provide better health and better hospitals for Australian working families.

This is the most significant reform to Australia’s health and hospitals system since the introduction of Medicare. It will make sure more hospital beds are available, there are more doctors and nurses, and it is easier to receive high quality GP and primary care services close to home.

From July 1 this year, the Gillard Labor Government began delivering $7.3 billion in investments over the next five years to provide:

1,300 new sub-acute hospital beds
Emergency department waiting times capped at four hours;
Elective surgery delivered in clinically recommended times for 95 per cent of Australians;
Training for 6,000 more doctors, including doubling the number of GPs trained every year;
Better support for nurses working in GP and primary care, aged care and mental health;
A national after hours GP service – with a 24 hour hotline that provides GP advice and can arrange a follow-up visit in your local community;
Support to upgrade around 425 GP practices and health clinics across the country – so that GPs can expand their facilities and locate more services in a single community location.
Support for 2,500 additional aged care beds;
A personally controlled electronic health record for every Australian that wants one;
new investments in prevention, including tough new action to tackle smoking; and
new investments in mental health services, with 20,000 extra young people per year to get assistance.

The Government’s National Health and Hospitals Network will be funded nationally and run locally. It will mean that Australian working families are no longer shunted from one system funded by the State Government to another funded by the Australian Government. Under this reform, the Australian Government will:

become the dominant funder of public hospitals - funding 60 per cent of the nationally efficient price of public hospital services for public patients
fund 60 per cent of buildings, equipment, teaching and training costs in public hospitals
takeover funding for GP and primary care
takeover funding for aged care

This new National Health and Hospitals Network will also give hardworking doctors and nurses more say in the way their local health and hospital services are run, through Local Hospital Networks and new primary health care organisations.

Without essential reforms, spiralling health costs would have consumed entire revenue raised by states and territories. To ensure the system’s funding is sustainable into the future, the Labor Government will provide a minimum of $15.6 billion in top-up funds for public hospitals over the next decade.

Taking action now will ensure we can manage the health challenges of the 21st Century, such as obesity and diabetes.

Labor will make sure our health system can serve the needs of all Australians, no matter where they live, and irrespective of their income.

We are committed to building a health system that, from the maternity ward to the aged care home, focuses on keeping people healthy and in their own homes and communities for as long as they desire, and ideally out of hospital.

Some Key Achievements:

We’ve increased hospitals funding by over 50 per cent
We have taken action that has seen record number of Australians getting their elective surgery on time, with more than 76,000 elective surgery procedures delivered in the last two years and over 125 hospitals receiving new elective surgery equipment and operating theatres.
We are injecting $1.5 billion in public hospital emergency departments – this has already seen more than 35 emergency departments receive upgrades and will expand capacity to rollout a new four hour cap on emergency department waiting times.
We are expanding the number of hospital beds, with a record investment to build 1,300 new sub-acute hospital beds
We are taking action to address dire workforce shortages - a legacy of the Howard Government. We are doubling the number of GP training places to 1,200 a year by 2014 and will fund training for over 1,000 new nurses each year.
We are delivering on our commitment to build 31 GP Super Clinics that locate a range of services in one convenient location – and have added an additional 5 communities that will benefit.
We said we would build a health system to serve future generations, which is why we established the Health and Hospitals Fund to make long-term, inter-generational investments in our national health infrastructure. This fund has invested $3.2 billion in 32 projects around the country.
We are investing $2 billion into building a world class cancer care system – including building regional cancer centres to make it easier for Australians to receive the care they need close to home.
We have committed to closing the unacceptable life expectancy gap for Indigenous Australians within two generations and backed this up with an investment of $1.6 billion in an Indigenous health national partnership.
We have delivered more than 850,000 dental check-ups to teenagers under the Medicare Teen Dental Plan.
We are providing more attractive incentives and retention bonuses for doctors to work in rural and regional Australia, because we know that these areas are the lifeblood of Australia.
We have increased aged care places by more than 10,000 - including 838 new transitional care places to help up to 6,285 older Australians leave hospital sooner each year
We have cut binge drinking, by closing the tax loophole that saw alcopop sales soar and implementing a $103 million binge drinking strategy. This has seen alcopops consumption fall by 30 per cent
We are rolling out preventative health programs in schools, workplaces and communities across the country.